They all hold a transient population that must be looked after 24 hours per day, while also housing a permanent population of people who provide this 'care'. Prisons and hospitals sometimes try and look and operate like hotels, but hotels naturally try and avoid any association with the other two building types.
Prisons are the built embodiment of the state, where the state exerts complete power over the involuntary occupants.
Hospitals are where the state manifests itself in a benevolent and curative capacity for the voluntary (but often with no other choice) occupants. Though in some instances, patients are 'paying customers'. An important point is that they may present themselves with a medical need that is so urgent that there is no other choice, so medical treatment is both involuntary and consensual - patients want it, but cannot want it.
At the other end of this spectrum, hotels operate in a free market, catering to the voluntary, paying occupants' every whim.
Architecture is a means to hide and reveal, to lock in or allow out.
Buildings invariably incorporate the social relations between the people they are designed for. That is, when we look at walls, doors, windows, stairwells and other openings, we might ask 'who are these structures supposed to lock out and who are they supposed to allow in?'. The second question may relate to hiding and revealing - what is supposed to be hidden by the walls/ceilings/floor/door and what is expected to be revealed, and for whom? There are degrees of privacy in every type of building - the most obvious examples being seen in domestic dwellings where the degree of public to private occupancy can be seen when moving from the entrance hall, the living area, the bathroom, the bedroom.
A hospital hides the sick from the healthy, but not necessarily the sick from each other (though they may choose - because of an anxiety about being exposed in an unsightly circumstance - to pay for a private room in order not to reveal themselves to others). This play of hiding and revealing is seen in shared rooms with the bedside curtain, in the examination areas. But there are also many other things hospitals want to hide like the places where body remains are stored and disposed of, where corpses are kept.
Hospitals, like homes, have areas that could be described as 'on stage' and 'back stage' areas - the former are for public display but the latter are spaces where people can collect their thoughts, relax alone. In a hospital, the staff rooms are back stage areas where nurses can complain or laugh about a particular patient - this is not meant to happen 'on stage'. Patients also have their back stage area - a place away from he gaze of others where they can hide after keeping up a facade of courage for their family, to have a few minutes alone to cry or just let their smile slip. These back stage areas are important to maintain the public presentation of self, their pride. Hospitals need to provide areas for this, for visitors and patients.
Summarised from:
de Swaan, Abram. "Constraints and Challenges in Designing Hospitals: the Sociological View" In The Architecture of Hospitals, edited by Cor Wagenaar, 88-95, Rotterdam: NAi Publishing, 2006.
So...architecture could be thought of as containers for a wide range of social interactions and relationships, providing all sorts of opportunities for encounters, but also shielding against unwanted intrusion and inspection or surveillance
'the material embodiment of human interactions in all their variability and variety.'
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